Lovecraft's Nightmare
by ADyingGalaxy
Summary: Dipper and Mabel were eldritch abominations, but they were also family; you didn't abandon your family.
1. Chapter 1

_A/N: Enjoy :)_

* * *

The drive down to Piedmont was a quiet one.

He'd turned the radio on as soon as he'd driven past the water tower, but Stan might as well have not done anything but kept his hands on the wheel. He couldn't concentrate on the music between ruminating on current circumstances

He veered onto a highway that must've been remodeled while he stowed away in Gravity Falls for the last 20 years, and checked his watch. Stan sighed, feeling weak while the sky ahead faded into a watery grey as the sun rose. It was 5:15 in the morning.

Stan approached the suburban nightmare of a home with his hat in hand. It felt ridiculous, approaching his niece and nephew's home with the same formality reserved for cops and army recruiters, but he was at odds with the situation at hand.

Alex Pines opened the door after a good, long minute of Stan peering around at the browning lawn and the grade schoolers rattling their tasseled bikes up and down the driveway, racing to the end of the road to see who could get to the stop sign the fastest.

"Uncle Stanford." Alex smiled faintly. It had been two months since they'd seen and spoken to each other last, and Stan didn't blame the young man for his lack of enthusiasm.

"Hey, kid."

* * *

"I'm… glad you could make it."

Stan had been invited in politely – something that he was awkwardly unaccustomed to, he realized while wiping his feet on the mat and returning a tight-lipped smile.

The house was quiet, like it had been when Stan had visited once. He'd come down to visit the only relatives that had deigned to live on the West Coast, and not a state over from his own that he hadn't been banned from permanently.

That had been five years ago, when he'd never met his niece Rebecca and her husband before.

Alex's shoulders slumped, and his hands balled into fists. "Was it, uh. Was the traffic bad?"

Stan, in the middle of blatantly observing the house and eyeballing the probable cost of everything that looked brand-spanking new, peered over at his niece's widow. "Nope. Not really, not until Sacamentos –"

"Sacramento, Stanford." Alex snorted. "Lemme go see if the babies are done with their nap."

Stan watched the man walk up the stairs and out of sight, before retiring to the living room with a drawn expression on his face.

* * *

Stan held Mabel Pines in his arms, unable to hide a dopey smile on his face as the toddler grabbed at his nose and babbled incoherently in his face. Alex sat rigidly across from them, dwarfed by the couch cushions and growing pale as a ghost as he looked beyond the happy scene in front of him and drowned in his tumultuous assortment of thoughts.

Dipper had still been asleep when Alex had gone up to check on the little boy and his twin sister. But of course, Mabel barely slept at all, day or night.

"I've been thinking about… about the deal we made…"

Mabel reached for the little toy tiger that Stan held out for her, smiling with delight as it jingled. She was completely oblivious to the conversation taking place on her hunt to catch the stuffed animal, but above her, Stan looked at Alex over his glasses.

"I think… maybe we should just call it off. I know that you drove a long, long way to get here, and I'm not ungrateful! Really!" Stan frowned while Alex wiped his forehead, which shown in the low lamplight.

It was a dreary day in Piedmont, for once, but the curtains were mostly drawn and Alex hadn't turned on every light in the house like Rebecca would have during such weather. "But I… I just…"

Alex held a hand to his mouth, brown eyes wide and glassy before he shuddered and tears dripped down from the bridge of his nose and over his lips and cheeks.

Before him, Stan couldn't have felt more out of his element and disturbed if he tried. He'd anticipated this, but he'd also anticipated, and hoped, for a fist-fight as an alternative. Even a 10-hour drive filled with planning and dreading and predicting in the vein of his elderly mother hadn't prepared Stanley for the real deal – that deal being trying to comfort his in-law.

The older Pines inadvertently let his hand drift lower, and Mabel caught the tiger with both hands with a happy squeak of delight. Stan returned his attention to the child and smirked as she waved her catch in his face gloatingly.

"Alex, I know. I know it's hard." Stan rose from his chair, and listened to it crack and pop with a barely audible hiss. He moved to stand beside his nephew, with Mabel in the crook of his other arm, and squeezed the man's shoulder.

"And it's your decision, it'll always be to you. I thought we just agreed that it'd be better this way until you were back on your feet and we could… I could figure the rest along the way." Stan argued carefully.

The conman listened to his nephew's sobbing die out steadily, and he felt Mabel slip her arms around his neck to look at Alex with curious and concerned eyes.

Looking at the little girl, you'd never imagine she was anything but what she appeared to be, and yet Stan had agonized over taking her and her brother – _her twin_ – back to Gravity Falls, Oregon. He wasn't Stanford Pines, the genius, scientist Brainiac with all the answers to a world's supply of freakish anomalies that could crack a case better than Conan Doyle character.

He was just Stan, the screw-up – the one who conned his way into a living under his brother's name, and who didn't know how he could possibly contain two rugrats that were supposedly 10x as difficult to handle as ordinary babies should be.

Still… he'd decided in the car upon crossing state lines. Stan Pines hadn't gotten anywhere by moping and fretting like a goddamn pansy.

"You're right. You're right."

Eventually, Alex was calm. He looked out of it, but he's voice came out clear as bell, and Mabel was distracted by her toy and not his fit anymore. "I just hope… I hope Becky will forgive me."

He cleared his sinuses, and reached for Mabel. He reached for her cautiously, like he was about to pet a wild mongoose, but Stan held in his irritancy for the sake of maintaining peace in the house.

"Mabel looks just like her mother, doesn't she? And so… does Mason. But of course, he would, too."

* * *

Stan lay staring up at the ceiling. He had to stop obsessively checking the time, although the guest room in his niece and nephew's home had come with a complimentary digital clock, glowing at his bedside.

The man was restless. After a quiet dinner, and a quick visit with Mason and Mabel after Mason's long-winded nap, Stan had had to do some more convincing to get Alex off to bed without sobbing himself into a stranglehold or doing something extra crazy that would get him carried off in a straightjacket.

The old man rubbed at the corner of his eyes and sighed for the twelfth time that night. He hadn't felt this old since he'd considered a mirror with his full suit on and realized that he'd forgotten to put a girdle on before giving another tour. At the rate that things were changing, Stan was certain that he'd be having these moments more consistently by the time he'd gone back to Oregon – time and Alex permitting, nonetheless.

The sound of a snap drove Stan's thoughts away, as well as the warm, out-of-place sound of what had to be kindling of some kind. Stan's gaze slid away from the ceiling and traveled to the open doorframe, where a faint blue-ish glow hummed just within his line of sight.

Stan left his too-firm bed and didn't bother to redress before he followed the trail of the humming, snapping and hissing and landed in front of the door that led to Mabel and Mason's room. He let the door swing open with a quiet shove and stared at both children, sitting up and face-to-face.

Alex's fancy-shmancy smoke detectors hadn't gone off, and Alex hadn't come running from his room, but there was a fire on the twins' crib.

The fire crackled, gleaming from where it bled out and up from Mason's fingertips to reflect off Stanley's specs.

"Hey, hey. None of that till we get to Gravity Falls, kiddo." He interrupted their awe by waving at them. Mason, despite being far too young, had the decency to look ashamed and fearful.

"Bah!" Mabel flung a chubby hand at Stan, defending her brother with a defiant expression that made the tired old man chuckle a little too loudly.

"Don't worry, sweetie. I'm not gonna hurt you or your brother." He leaned on the shared crib. "You just can't go around doin' that until we get home, alright?"

Mason's head tilted, and with a look to her brother, Mabel followed suit.

"Yep. You guys are gonna like it there much more than here." Stan smiled reassuringly. "I bet you all your animal crackers on it."

* * *

 _A/N: Written because I want to write Grunkle Stan bonding with his niblings._


	2. Chapter 2

_A/N: Thank you for reading! Please R &R if you have time. Enjoy!_

* * *

"Okay, I bought you guys your own cribs. Isn't that somethin'?" Stan rolled up his sleeves, and gestured around the attic. "Well, I built them… I mean Soos built them, but I told him what to do, so it was a joint effort. Based on my idea."

The twins looked at their great uncle with big, bright, attentive eyes from within their respective carriers, but were otherwise oblivious to Stan's braggadocios demeanor.

"Here, wanna better look?" Stan handled both Mabel and Mason in his arms with surprising ease, and he lowered one child after the other while walking across the attic floor.

There was usually a great deal of difference between the twins, but both stuck their chubby hands out to bat at the cedar wood and the bars of their respective new beds.

"Yeah, cozy-lookin', huh?" Stan schmoozed while Dipper struggled to hold onto the upper bar of the crib. The man held the child even closer, but reared back almost immediately afterward when Mason opened his gummy mouth and placed it on the cedar.

"Hey, no! Not for eating. Get that fine craftsmanship from yours truly outta your mouth, kid!" He wondered if it was possible to get splinters in your tongue while trying to pry the baby's lips off his own crib.

* * *

Stan had taken too much time off work, of that he was certain – a whole week without business was a week wasted. That was why he'd decided that the seventh day of no work would be switched to a half-day instead. It would help their profits get back on track, and put Stan at ease better than letting another day pass without cold, hard cash in his hands.

He'd also asked Soos to return, and was rewarded with a chipper, ready-to-help handyman. It hardly mattered that Soos had been over on and off during his supposed 'break' that Stan had offered him, to help with getting the twins' room ready and figuring out the whole baby-proofing plan in the shack. Technically speaking, it was ill-advised to house infants in a house that acted both as a living space for an old man bachelor and as a tourist trap filled with creepy, dangerous displays.

But as long as they didn't break anything on purpose, Stan didn't think it would be too difficult to keep everything under control for the next 18 or so years.

Once he'd finished with his second-to-last tour of the day, Stan bid his group of sight-seeing suckers to head into the gift shop. He waited for the last man, hobbling with a cane of all things, to fit through the door before Stan struggled to get the double stroller that held Mabel and Mason into the shop as well. His eyes instantly drifted to the cash register, where Soos was loitering before he received orders to fix and/or clean up whatever he could.

"Soos, would ya gimme a hand?" Stan tried again to shove the stroller through the narrow frame of the door, but winced when one of the welded bars of the stroller whacked against the wood door.

"Sure thing, Mr. Pines!" Soos approached and lifted the seats up from under both infants, who squeaked at the sudden change in height. The young man pulled both children and his boss into the shack with freakish strength before looking at the boy and girl adoringly, and reaching out to shake each toddler's hand.

"Hey, tiny dude an' tiny dudette. I'm Soos, your faithful handyman."

"Aww, they sure are cute, Mr. Pines." The elder man watched Mabel grab Soos's hand enthusiastically while her brother did the same in a much more cautious, curious way.

"Yeah, yeah, precious darlings from above, or whatever." They did look awfully cute, cherubic in fact, but Stan couldn't afford to get distracted cooing over them like a ninny. He walked behind the register while Soos remained distracted, and opened it up to check their current cash supply.

"Haha, hey, look." Soos gently brushed Mason's bangs away from his forehead, while Stan looked past his shoulder. "Did you know this little guy had a birth mark on his face?"

Stan blinked at the sight of several dark flecks of skin centered on Mason's forehead. The spots weren't wounds of any sort, nor burns, but they looked like how stars did when you viewed them from Earth – speckled in the great sea of night with tiny points and burning edges. There were indistinct lines connecting each of the dots on the little boy's forehead, forming a grander design once you got a good look at them.

"Weird. It looks like the big dipper, doesn't it?" Soos turned to look back at Stanley, eyebrows raised.

While he hadn't noticed how bizarrely pinpoint the birthmark was beforehand (it looked like it'd been drawn on carefully like a tattoo, for Christ's sake), Stan hid his nerves beneath layers and layers of stoic indifference.

"Eh, I guess so. Kinda skewed on the right side, though." Stan replied, as apathetic as a con-artist worth his salt. After a moment, he began to drum his fingers against the table.

"Hey, Soos… think I could make a profit lettin' little old ladies take pictures with the kids?" Stan changed the subject, shuffling the wad of cash in his hands.

* * *

When the day was done and Soos was near forcibly evacuated from the shack and back to his abuelita's home, Stan dressed in comfier attire (his boxers and wife-beater, and those dumb bunny slippers he'd found years ago). His routine would have to change at some point, but after a dinner consisting of receiving third-degree burns from testing baby formula and microwaving a Lonely Man Meal for himself – as well as saving Mabel from a near death when her homemade highchair creaked and collapsed at the table – Stan settled in front of the TV for the remainder of the evening.

With both children on either side of his lap, Stan, while not a religious man, thanked the material bible that Mabel and Dipper were mesmerized by the television instantaneously. Public Access TV had a selection of programs just as exciting as mildew on bread for the most part, but if Bob Rose and Perry Masterson entertained the tykes then that was good enough for Stan. He was able to tune it out in the meantime, letting the mindless shows run through in front of his eyes as he often did after 20 years of the same mild programming.

The conman yawned when the light outside the Mystery Shack darkened and the forest surrounding them was bathed in dark blue, and checked his wristwatch habitually.

* * *

He'd forgotten to jack some batteries from the nearest grocery mart, but at least those clinking, old-fashioned lanterns that were sold in the gift shop handled candle flame without overheating.

The trip down from behind the vending machine and into the basement never ceased to make Stan feel uneasy. He blamed it on an old, old, embedded fear from childhood, one suppressed so that he could look strong and courageous in front of his twin (and their father) that was coming to an ugly head with age. It was stupid, but at least Stan was alone for now, and there wasn't a soul to see him shudder at the cobwebs that formed every hour along the stairwell or shiver in the dankness of the dark basement and its trove of hidden gadgetry.

He made a beeline for Stanford's desk as soon as his slippers touched ground level, and he swore as piles of paper rushed from the unlocked compartment and flooded the tabletop. No matter how often he berated himself, Stan could never find set aside a time to organize all the clutter he'd built up since he'd begun fixing up his brother's portal.

Taking out a blank page from one of the folded-up and empty notebooks that emerged behind the mess of entries, Stan wrote while cursing his own handwriting for being so big and convoluted. Writing these letters, while they remained of utmost importance, was starting to take too damn long, making Stan wonder if he should invest in one of those PC devices that were getting big.

Then again, those things cost a fortune and had a lot of attention paid to them. And who would know how to work the damn thing? Certaintly not Stan himself.

 _Hey Sixer,_

 _It'll be 21 years since I last spoke you by the end of this summer. I'm still having a hell of a time trying to figure out how to work your portal – transport – conducto-majig thing, since I only have the one journal that you shoved at me. I guess I at least have that still._

 _There's more important news that I need to share with you, though. The last time I wrote you, it was about Shermie's daughter and her accident, and about that talk I had with her husband. Remember the deal I made with him? Well, you will once you read the other letters, but the point is he followed through with a little convincing and some blubbering. Can't blame him, but I've got the kids, now._

 _I damn well hope I can get this thing in working order, so you can get back where you belong and you can help me figure these ankle biters out. I've already seen 'em do strange things that most people can't, and every time I'm reminded of you. Did you know that the boy has a birth mark shaped like the big dipper? Soos got it goin' as his nickname now._

 _Dipper is a lot like you, I can already tell. Mabel, his sister, is kinda like you too. She's a real riot –_

The sound of bawling reached the man's ears from all the way up in the attic before he could finish his sentence.

"Christ." Stan shut down the machine with the flip of a hand and put his personal notes as well as the journal back in their compartment. The elder man stomped out of the underground with a weary groan, flipping the light off as he did so.

When he reached the main level of the shack, Stan took a breather before he set foot on the first step to the attic. He was getting old, or so his mind complained; too old to be raising kids.

Stan braced himself, then marched up the stairs purposefully and hurried over to the attic where the twins lay.

The grandfather clock, with its curious slit for an eye, followed Stan's movements with profound interest all the way from the gift shop.


	3. Chapter 3

_A/N: Enjoy! Please R &R if you have time!_

* * *

"Daddy! Daddy!"

In the waning sunlight that signaled dusk, the last thing Stan would've expected was Dipper calling him 'daddy'. The baby said it so happily and naturally that it made the old man's chest tighten into a painful know and stirred heat into his throat until his mouth ran dry. Stan looked away from the newspaper between his hands and saw Dipper, clad in cutoff onesie and his diaper, crawling along the grass like an overly-excited puppy.

The elder Pines had decided that it would do them all some good to get out of the Shack after a month of figuring out how things would change around there. They had too much energy to just sit in their carriers or roll about on the rug next to his TV set.

"No, no. None of that." Stan corrected, gruff voice coming out as gentle as his vocal cords allowed. "I'm your uncle. I'm your great-uncle, but we'll just settle on uncle until you guys start reciting your p's and q's."

He shouldn't have been the least bit surprised that 9-month-old babies tended to forget their fathers if they weren't around them for extended periods of time. Stan posited in his brain that little, little, itty-bitty kids were similar to cats and dogs in that they'd roll over and run to you on command no matter who you were, as long as you showed a little love their way.

Dipper slowed, looking at Stan and his slippers from just a step below the backporch. The little boy let himself be picked up and set on Stan's lap, once the man had set his newspaper aside, and simply observed Stanley with large orbs for eyes.

"Lookit." Dipper finally said, gazing at Stan shyly as he held out a rock for his guardian to inspect. It was circular and smooth – and bright purple with a silver crack in the middle – and while it was real, Stan inhaled sharply over how perfectly sculpted it was. The iris-looking stone looked like it should've been made of cheap, convincing plastic and sold in Stan's gift shop, but alas, his nephew had just been wandering around in the backyard grass and come upon it like any other bit of gravel.

Stan might've called it a trait of Dipper's, as with time, the baby boy was expert at unassumingly collecting the unexpected and showing it to Stan. Had the child been more self-aware, Stan would've assumed that Dipper showed these things to him just to get a reaction out of the older Pines.

"That's nice, kiddo. Real pretty." Stan flipped the smooth rock over and over between them, skimming over the child's expression more than the stone. Dipper's eyes lit up at the motion, and he was transfixed on until Mabel squeaked near them.

"Daddy!" She repeated Dipper's earlier words, with a baby's equivalent of a grin on her face while she toddled as fast she could to where her great uncle and twin were nestled.

Stan sighed, getting up again just to scoop her up. "You're killin' me, kids. You're really killin' me."

He snorted when Mabel and Dipper both laughed obnoxiously at his groaning, and decided to sit back once the twins were snuggled in with him on his dumpy lawn chair. It was time for a nap. The talking and titling business that Mabel and Dipper were up to had already exhausted him.

* * *

Dreaming was, for Stan Pines, an odd experience no matter what was at the forefront of his mind. For the longest time, Stan dreamt of charging through blizzards and feeling icy wind against his numbed face, or he dreamt of nebulous things that he couldn't quite make out. Colors and shapes, and creatures he'd never imagined since he was a boy drawing in the sand with his brother and a scrap of a sailboat beside them, paraded before his eyes with gusto and charisma.

But since the twins' arrival, his mind was stable. And for some reason, he was just as outwardly, consciously aware of that fact as he was within the dreams while he had them. Stan remembered the term for it, after a few winks of sleep: lucid dreaming. He'd begun lucid dreaming, floating around in scenarios that played out before him until he manipulated them as he pleased.

Stan stood at Glass Shard Beach, for instance, with his toes squished among the sand. He knew that outside of this plane of existence, he was still sleeping with the twins in his arms, but the dream felt just as real. The man watched Stanford and himself as two boys, swinging in companionable silence while the ocean waves rolled and crashed harmoniously. He'd missed the wild, rushing sound, even decades upon decades after he'd been forced to leave it behind.

" _How long ago was this?_ "

Stan squinted against the sea breeze, and watched as the boys continued to swing merrily. The question came from somewhere the sleeping man couldn't see, from a nasally voice that Stan didn't recognize.

" _You seem happy together, as children._ "

"We were." Stan replied candidly. He dragged his feet through the sand, creating tracks like he'd done when he'd been eight – nine – twelve – sixteen. "We were always happy when we were together. I thought so, anyway."

" _I've heard most siblings would rather kill each other than spend time together by the end._ " Claimed the voice knowingly. " _You and Stanford were no exception, were you?_ "

Stan scoffed, turning in his spot and making a circle around himself with one foot. "Sure. We fought each other… sometimes. But not enough that we actually, ya know, did somethin' really stupid, like hate each other."

Stan looked up, gaping orbs for eyes. The sky didn't speak again for a prolonged period of time, but the clouds looked back at the man. "Why're ya askin'?"

" _Curious._ " The sky replied, and all the eyes looked purple as the sky's clouds had been when Stan had fallen asleep in the evening. " _We both looked for the same things, but I've already seen how yours plays out._ "

" _I wondered what will happen to mine?_ "

* * *

Stan woke in a cold sweat, and felt a headache coming on as he forced himself not to leap up and throw off the babies that were still laying against him. It was the dead of night, quite possibly past midnight, and he'd let himself pass out with his vulnerable niece and nephew outside in the growing cold.

"Hell." Dipper and Mabel were still dozing, or better yet, dead to the world. Stan moved inch by inch to raise them all out of the dumpy chair and managed to walk back into the Shack without their alarming cries ringing in his ears.

"I'm sorry, kids. Don't know what happened…" The aging man's voice trailed away as he tried to maneuver within the shack without proper light. He made it to his bedroom with some luck and carefully placed the siblings on the bed to continue to rest, wondering idly why they hadn't awoken in all that time.

 _All the better_ , Stan decided after some mild thinking. Who knew with these kids, what their energy went into and just how much they had stored up on a day to day basis.

* * *

For some reason, he couldn't put a name to it, Stan felt unease with going back into the basement over the next couple of days. Instead, he spent the nights trying not to sleep for too long in the event that he plum forgot to wake up.

It was already a hassle trying to get into the public library at Gravity Falls without being given the stink eye by the spinster librarian who knew about his overdue library fines and his five different library cards (which was a whole other story since Stan didn't know what the big deal was, it was the library's fault that they gave away free stuff to begin with). It was even more of a hassle getting two not-quite-toddlers ready to go out, having to stop for people to cluck over them, and reaching the only library in town to learn that while there were plenty of books on learning how to lucid dream, there were next to none on learning how to stop it.

Pines came back to their home in a sour-mood, and unbuckled the twins rather brusquely before letting them roll about on the carpet. Stan refrained from stomping while he went into the kitchen to grab their bottles and formula, berating himself internally for being such a yellow-belly over one uncanny dream.

"I've seen and imagined worse in prison, for cryin' out loud." Stan muttered, making quick work of testing the temperature of the baby formula before he returned to the living room.

All of his frustrated grumbling and secret fear flew out the window at the scene he returned to. Stan stopped abruptly, eyes widening at the previously peaceful twins. The boy and girl were positioned the same way they had been in their forgotten cradle from the equally as forgotten Alex and Rebecca Pines.

Their eyes were wide and unblinking, and their little hands reached out for one another's while an inexplicable wind rustled their hair up and away from their chubby faces. Stan watched with mouth agape, expecting blue flame to flicker from one or both of the kids' hands, yet thanking his lucky stars that the Mystery Shack was closed for the night.

But there were no flames whatsoever. Instead, Mabel and Dipper held hands, and with a show of concentrated effort, the two began to slowly rise onto their wobbly feet.

Stan couldn't help himself. He gasped when they managed to, after a few tries, stand up on the circular rug he'd placed them on.

"You're doin' it!" Stan dropped to his knees, uncaring of the wooden floor and how it would no doubt bruise his skin and hurt like hell later on. He set the bottles beside him on the carpet while Dipper looked at Stan first, acknowledging his presence with a glowing smile. "You're standin' up all by yourselves!"

"You're both doin' it!"

"Daddy!" Mabel reached out to Stan with the hand that held Dipper's, like an adventurer setting a course for exploration. The two turned in a painstakingly slow fashion, but Stan couldn't help his growing excitement.

"Come on, Mabel! Come'on Dipper! Come over here! Come on!" The man held his arms out for the children, inviting them toward him. He watched their every move with bated breath, not tempering in the least when Mabel began bouncing and almost made them both lose their balance or when Dipper looked like he was about give up and cry because they weren't yet in Stan's embrace.

Instead, the older Pines continued to encourage them, repeating the invitational mantra without fail as they teetered and tottered in his direction.

It could've been a minute or an hour, but Stan laughed when Mabel and Dipper fell against him as one. He clutched the children to him without a care, as if daring the whole world to see how soft and soppy and adoring he was. He laughed, and laughed until tears fell from his eyes.

The calendar on the wall marked the date as June 15th.


	4. Chapter 4

A/N: Sorry for the slow update! I have a lot of WIPs I'm keeping track of, and I'm drowning. Enjoy, and please R&R!

* * *

Hey Sixer,

 _Is it cold wherever you are? Or hot? Does time have meaning at all wherever it is you're trapped in?_

 _The summer is only just starting here. It's mid-June, but it got up to 88 degrees last Saturday, and I actually regretted not spending any money on an air conditioner when the kids wouldn't stop cryin' all damn day and into the night. None of us slept all that well – but honestly, I'm kinda grateful. Now I ain't scared or anything, but sometimes when I'm asleep I dream of weird well, it's kinda hard to describe. I hear voices a voice and it talks to me when I'm dreaming, and somethin's just not right._

 _I know that the kids' father wasn't Alex, but I don't know if it's Rebecca trying to talk to me from beyond the grave or something crazy like that. It sure doesn't sound like her. Maybe if you'd gotten a chance to meet her, and if you were around now, you'd have a better idea._

 _I'm wondering if the voice in the dream is the real – I mean what if this thing is trying to ?_

 _I'll write again soon. Just wanted to catch up._

* * *

"Sheesh, are ya determined to destroy the whole table too?"

Stan snatched up bits of falling food from Mabel's lips with a spoon, though the action did little to deter the already wild mess that the little girl had made of herself. There were bits of pancake, banana, and a smattering of syrup all over her chubby little cheeks and within the palms of her hands. Hands which she was busy slapping against the table in the attempt to demand more delicious new foodstuffs.

Mabel had been having the time of her life while trying out solid foods. Technically, the children should've already been introduced to pureed baby food months before Stan had picked them up. The elder Pines supposed however, with the ultra-enthusiasm from Mabel and the medium-ultra-enthusiasm from Dipper, that Alex Pines had not begun that process.

"Better than that powdery milk gunk your uncle is forced to feed ya, huh?" Stan leaned in as if conspiring with the girl twin, only to snatch a napkin and begin wiping her face while he had the chance. She squealed and jerked away, dodging feebly while he focused on her lips, but that didn't make her smile permanently vanish.

It wasn't a hassle until Dipper lobbed mashed pancake at his great uncle, throwing both his sister and Stan off guard. Mabel, reliably, laughed, but their uncle swatted the debris from where it'd landed on his ear with a huff.

"Hey!" Stan said, a little too loudly. He didn't bother to look around at the other sleepy-headed customers in Greasy's Diner, knowing full well that he'd been getting looks across the aisle before he raised his voice. For once, he wanted a quiet morning without attracting more attention than he already had as he'd come strolling in with two babies in a crummy stroller.

"I actually like this place, Dipper. Let's not cause a scene and be more trouble than we're worth." Stan lowered his voice. "Eat your slop like a good boy, will ya?"

The old man grimaced at how much like his own mother he sounded. Meanwhile, Dipper already looked spooked from being yelled at, and his lower lip trembled like he was on the threshold of tears, which did absolutely zilch for Stan's internal stress. The old man breathed out wearily, feeling guilt begin to gnaw within the pit of his stomach like a rat would at moldy cheese.

"Aw, kid." He sighed. "I'll get you and your sister some ice cream after we're done if you're good, how about that?"

He brushed some of the mush and syrup from Dipper's chubby, quivering cheeks as gently as he could with a napkin. Stan took a moment in between to ruffle the child's mop of hair, (who knew babies as young as the twins could already have more hair on their heads than a troll doll?) and lingered to wipe the tears away with soothing fingers. A tight knot built up within Stanley's chest as the child snuggled into his much larger hand, and gave him a wide-eyed, sad look.

"Oh my goodness!" A familiar, croaky voice entered Stan's ears and he dropped his hand just as a new figure rounded on their table. Three pairs of eyes beheld the dowdy image of Susan Wentworth in all her frowsy, be-waitressed glory.

"Look at you two! Aww, you're as adorable as… as two newborn kittens!" Susan clucked at the twins, who both gaped at her. Stan couldn't blame either of them, the woman was sluggish and offbeat in a way that wasn't so much a mystery as it was reason enough to stay away from her, no matter how foxy she may have been.

And the eye. There was also the eye.

"Hey, Sus…sie-Q." Stan flirted, terribly. Susan glanced at him, greying hair bouncing about her shoulders as she noticed the Pines man and attempted to bat her eyelashes. "How's the, uh, waffle maker?"

"Hello, Mr. Man." Susan was just as terrible at flirting as Stan, and that much duller. "Are these cuties yours?"

"Ah, well…" Stan rubbed the back of his neck, only to get sticky syrup all over. He cringed as the process of unsticking his fingers, none too smoothly pulled out an unprecedented clump of hair, flagrantly apparent as he gestured to the kids. "Yeah. This is my great-nephew Dipper and his sister, Mabel."

Before he could even finish his introductions, Mabel jumped in her seat, smashing food flat against the table as well as sending bits flying in every direction.

"Up! Up!" The girl reached out grabby little hands, giving both Stan and Susan pause. She was reaching out for the waitress, of all people, and doing so gleefully – stubbornly.

Susan gasped. "Oh! You wanna come to me, sweetie?"

She leaned over the mess of a table, getting syrup and barely cooked batter all over her outfit and lifted Mabel out of her booster seat. Susan only laughed, unfazed, when Mabel reached up and patted the eye that Stan had inexplicably injured when he'd first scammed the people of Gravity Falls. Across from his great-uncle, Dipper watched the interaction with barely blinking eyes, transfixed quietly where his sister was noisily poking.

"Heh, yeah… Mabel's a social butterbug." Stan laughed to hide the fact that he had no idea why his pumpkin was so intrigued by the frumpy woman. It wasn't like Lazy-eyed Susan minded, obviously, but it was ridiculous how the old man felt a pit of jealousy developing in his chest.

He'd taken them out this morning to get out of the Shack (an occurrence that was, unfortunately, fast-becoming quite common these days). The first thing to pop up in Stan's mind had been to take the kids sailing on the lake, non-discreetly wishing to impart a love of the activity that he and his brother had once shared. Undoubtedly, there would be plenty of people there while summer kept the sun up beyond regular hours, and Dipper and Mabel were cute – they'd surely attract some cooing mother here or curious elementary school children there.

Stan knew he was greedy, but wanting the twins to only love him and him alone was a reckless idea and probably not good for them. For any of them.

Look where it'd led the first time.

* * *

"Do I know ya, sir?"

Stan grumbled as he finally got Mabel to sit still long enough for him to fasten her seatbelt. The dock to his rickety old fishing boat wasn't too far away, but as Stan imagined one of his kids being run over after getting a curious hand or foot stuck in the wheels of their stroller, he tightened the restraints that much more.

With thoughts already bordering on the melodramatic and horrific, Stan jumped upon turning around to find a shorter, bearded man with a pair of hanging specs and no shoes looking up at him. Pines frowned deeply at the sight of the man, as he often did whenever he came across McGucket and saw him that much more disheveled.

Stan knew lots of things, but he didn't know everything. He didn't know what had happened to this man's mind, but like many terrible things, Stan was certain it had to do with his family.

"Can't say you do." Stan said shortly, rounding to the handles of the twins' stroller and cutting the conversation off before it could continue. He moved past McGucket and down toward the dock, taking in the sight of how crowded it'd become since he'd last visited. It was like the schools around town had all evacuated to this very spot, with fewer parents in the area then Stan would've expected.

He shrugged, unbuckling the babies from their seats before depositing them both inside what would have to pass for luxury seating. Dipper immediately raked his eyes across the lake from over the edge of the tiny vessel, while Mabel took to gripping his shirt and swaying them both back and forth, making noise that Stan thought might be singing.

Once they were both safe and not threatening to tip the boat (though how they could, Stan had no idea), Stan smiled at his little sailor buddies before stopping to untie the dinky boat that bobbed on the murky water. The elder Pines did a double take at the flash of yellow on the surface of the otherwise pitch dark lake, and he automatically shivered in the hot summer sun. Stan didn't recognize the otherworldly eyes that had stared back at him from within his own skull, not in that split-second.


	5. Chapter 5

Stan ruminated on the idea that having friends in Gravity Falls in the first place could have saved him from relating the act of fishing with drudgery. In his wildest daydreams, Stan imagined sailing over roaring ocean waves to many different parts of the world, but having to settle for a relatively placid lake was undeniably boring.

He'd forgone using the fishing rod to catch anything, already thinking that even if he caught anything remotely worth eating that it would be hard to feed the kids with. Instead, Stan watched his niece and nephew slap the surface of the lake and didn't bother to hide his laughter. He felt that annoying warmth and fuzziness as they played and splashed, and the older Pines didn't worry about being too guarded when Dipper made the water fountain upward in defiance of gravity. Stan had guided them far enough away from witnesses, and it was about time the kids had something to play with that wasn't the antenna on his TV or the stovetop in the kitchen.

He rested his chin on his closed fist, simply watching and making sure the babies were safe. After a while, Stan shifted, grunting with the effort it took to get comfortable onboard before he checked his watch.

It was only 11am.

Strangely, the sun had been out not too long ago, and yet Stan couldn't remember it leaving. And it was still the middle of June, so the mist that had taken the place of the sunshine baffled him. It was almost eerie how Stan couldn't see anything – no sun, no trees, no dock, and no people to speak of.

"Maybe we should head back, huh kids?" Stan asked while slowly observing how much had changed within what seemed like the span of a blink.

His attention returned to the inside of the boat at the lack of response, and Stan felt his heart stop and plummet from his ribs.

Dipper and Mabel were no longer in the boat.

"Kids?! Kids?!" He shouted frantically, rocking the Stan O' War as he panicked and gripped the edge of the vessel to look around the lack. As if the inexplicable mist wasn't enough, the dark, deep lake water was too gloomy to see through clearly, not that there was anything to see.

His entire recollection of what to do and what not to do while in the boat were forsaken as he stood up and turned in place. Stan strained to find either boy or girl, hopefully both, somewhere. Yet there was nothing, no indication of a struggle in the water nor any sign of their little limbs or mops of hair.

The man didn't spare a minute to think of the consequences – he hadn't seen either child fall into the water, but he assumed that it's what must've happened. And sure, the kids weren't as helpless as ordinary babies, but Stan didn't think they'd be magically capable of swimming.

He dove into the water.

Immediately, he was consumed by a flash; a blinding flash of yellow and crimson and black. The water beneath moved forward and back like it had a life of its own, pulling him in one way and pushed him another, but Stan couldn't get control. He couldn't see anything in the dank water, either.

The man felt something solid and prickly beneath his hands, so sturdy he could feel it through his vest and undershirt, and how it made the hair on his body stand up despite there being no wind.

The wallop of it hit Stan like a strong current at first, then left him adrift in the empty lake for several long, painful seconds that felt like lifetimes. Stan's chest was seizing and compressed by the pressure until another wave came, this time rising beneath not only the surface of the lake, but beneath him as well. The solid, slithering thing that had appeared before was back, moving slowly until his body was firmly against it. Stan registered the motion in brief, painful glimpses, which grew worse as the scaly whatsit arced upward and guided them both to the top in one fluid motion.

And then it was over, and he could breathe again. He could see again.

Stan gulped in lungful after lungful of air, hacking and wheezing simultaneously while the burn of lake water came out of him in gushes. He vomited on the side of the boat once he realized that he'd been coughing inside, where Dipper and Mabel were still playing with the water. Dipper made a noise of protest at his violent retches, but Stan shook his head, muffling the sound when he had control again.

"It's alright. I'm okay! Don't worry." He coughed. "Calm down! Calm down!"

* * *

You got sick fast when you got old.

Or maybe Stan was just noticing it quicker than he would have at twenty or thirty. He was still shivering after driving home while soaked (his clothes but not his body), but he had his strength, and Stan could hold both children to set them down on his bed.

Mabel and Dipper had chanted for a story just before their normal bedtime. He was tired, absolutely, but Stan obliged with only a sigh and thanked Ford – wherever he was – for having books a plenty that weren't riddled with codes and formulas. Then again, his shelves were lined with encyclopedias and books with different languages printed inside them that Stan couldn't hope to figure out in a night. The conman shuffled through tomes and late edition novels that looked just as lackluster as they did complex before he found a sliver of a book tucked away near the back. Stanley cringed at the thought of making up his own story, knowing that he'd probably scar the twins for life if he tried.

"Hey, I know this one." Stan took a small, gaudily-decorated cover from between the thick volumes and brushed away the dust that collected all over it. Sure enough, the sight he'd expected to see – that of a lumpy, misshapen rabbit – greeted his eyes. "Ma used ta read this when we were kids!"

He turned to the children, stifling a grin at seeing Mabel rolling around the bedspread like a baby seal. "Alright munchkins. Let's get this whimsical schmaltz over with so you aren't cranky tomorrow."

The cribs in the attic had been abandoned almost as soon as the twins had gotten to town. It would need to be rectified sometime in the future, but Stan often had one kid on either side of him when it was time to sleep these days. Sometimes that meant that all three of them slept in the chair or in the bed that had once belonged to Ford, but neither child protested being close to Stan. Not ever.

"Okay, once upon a time…"

* * *

"…Then, the boy got scarlet fever and his folks called a doctor." Stan flipped the page slowly, pulling away from Mabel's vice-like grip on his wrist. "The doctor said that the boy needed to go to the hospital, and that all the junk in his room would need to be cleaned and some of it thrown out, including the rabbit."

"The rabbit was bundled up in the garbage with all the boy's other stuff, and thrown away." The man raised the book and rotated it around so that Mabel and Dipper could see the pictures easier. "And the rabbit was sad, because he had never felt more unloved than he did when he was forgotten in the trash."

"But then, when it seemed like all hope was lost, a bright light came down from the heavens, and a beautiful fairy appeared before the forgotten rabbit. She looked at him kindly, and said 'you loved that boy so much, and you were such a good friend through the good times and the bad times, that I have come here to grant you life'."

Stan inhaled steadily, a crease appearing on his brow. "The rabbit could not believe it, but he and the fairy traveled to the woods, where the fairy worked her magic and turned the stuffed animal into a real, living, breathing rabbit. It was just like he'd always wanted, to be alive and warm and Real."

He paused.

"Many years later, the rabbit – who'd lived in the woods all this time – returned to the house where the boy had lived. He saw the boy again, but the boy was now a man with children of his own. And he was happy, which was all the rabbit could have ever wanted, since he still loved the boy very much."

"And the rabbit returned to the wood, where he remained happy and free. The end."

He expected Mabel to cry, at least. But you could never tell which twin would get emotional over what, it seemed. It was frankly unusual when Stan audibly sniffed, and lifted an arm to wipe his eyes. He grumbled after forgetting that his specs were still on the bridge of his nose.

"Uh, damn cold, makin' my glasses fog up." The man bemoaned, rubbing under his eyes. He tensed at lightest of touches on his forearm, and nearly knocked the glasses off when his hand drew away and he set his sights on the open, earnest faces looking back at him.

Mabel and Dipper shared twin expressions of alarm, already large eyes growing larger still as they pooled with tears. Instinctively, Stan brushed away their tears just as he'd tried to cover his.

"Don' do that. Come on, don't…" It was, as Ford might say, ludicrous how choked up he was getting, and over a dumb kid's book about a stuffed rabbit coming to life, like a cartoon.

It was stupid, how Stan's heart clenched over the fact that Ford had kept something like this. It didn't look like the kind of object that his Brainiac brother would have much interest in. If anything, the fact that the book was in the Shack at all meant that Ford had had a moment of weakness… an instant where he felt sentimental… where he missed childhood, the same childhood that Stanley had been a part of.

He didn't notice that he was downright losing it until the sound of Mabel and her brother whining unhappily mingled with another muffled, whimper-y sound. It was him, he was making that noise. And he wanted to hide his face even more after the fact, but the kids were still there in his lap and they were afraid. Stan scooped the boy and girl up into his arms and let them hug his arms and pet his cheeks as though he were bristling with fur. Mabel kissed his nose, and Dipper followed suit by kissing Stan's cheek and settling against the man's chest, keeping his bright brown eyes on Stan like a lost puppy. And it was just too much.

"Yeah, well… I'm mean…" He could barely speak as it was starting to hurt, so he stopped and was silent in their arms.

Stan shook, face reddening with the strain of a sob building in his throat. He tried to subdue the wretched noise as much as he could, and found himself hiding in Dipper's head of hair while Mabel cuddled up in his collarbone.

He was just tired. So, damn tired. He was exhausted, but Stan couldn't stop shaking, letting out the pain he'd carried for half a century until he couldn't shed another tear.

The Pines stayed that way for the rest of the night, until they lapsed into dreamlessness.

* * *

 _Dear Mabel and Mason,_

 _I l **o** ve you both so much. And this is one of the hardest things I've ever had to do – just writing this letter is breaking m **y** **h** eart, even though I know that what I'm doing is best for al **l** of us._

 _I was afraid to lea **v** e at first, because I'm only human and we scare easy. And because I had no one I trusted to take care of you like you deserved. You're both so special, and so near and dear to my heart. I can't bear the thought of giving you to a **w** orld that won't **u** nderstand you. Sometimes it seems like you can't trust anyone._

 _But I foun **d** someone I consider a friend, even though we didn't **k** now each other for that long. He came to visit before, when I felt like I needed to blind everyone and hide. He held you both in his arms after you entered this world and I swear he fell in love with you both on the spot. Your great-uncle Stanford and I understood each other then and there, and I'm certain that he'll be the one taking care of you in the future. I wish I could be with you when you reach Gravity Falls. I'm so sorry that I can't be. It's difficult to explain why, even though I set out to do **j** ust that by writing to you. What's important is that even though you're going to someplace where I can never follow, I hope you're both safe and that you feel like you've found **h** ome._

 _I will always love you both, and you'll always be my babies. Please don't ever think otherwise._

 _I miss you already, terribly so._

 _Love,_

 _Mom_

 _DQGGD G_

 _VHH BRXV LL Q_


End file.
